Here she was interrupted by the clatter of arms and rapping of hammers which came up from below.  Caesar’s Macedonian guard and other infantry troops were silently coming up in companies and vanishing into the side-doors which led to the upper tiers of the stadium.  What could this mean?  Meanwhile carpenters were busy fastening up the chief entrance with wooden beams.  It looked like closing up sluice-gates to hinder the invasion of a high tide.  But the stadium was already full of men.  She had seen thousands of youths march in, and there they stood in close ranks in the arena below her.  Besides these, there were now an immense number of soldiers.  They must all get out again presently, and what a crush there would be in the side exits if the vomitorium were closed!  She longed to call down, to warn the carpenters of the folly of their act.  Or was it that the youth of the town were to be pent into the stadium to hear some new and more severe decree, while some of the more refractory were secured?

It must be so.  What a shame!

Then came a few vexilla of Numidian troopers at a slow pace.  At their head, on a particularly high horse, rode the legate, a very tall man.  He glanced up to the side where she was, and Melissa recognized the Egyptian Zminis.  At this her hand sought the place of her heart, for she felt as though it had ceased to beat.  What!  This wretch, the deadly foe of her father and brother, here, at the head of the Roman troops?  Something horrible, impossible, must be about to happen!

The sun was mirrored in the shining coat of his horse, and in the lictor’s axe he bore, carrying it like a commander’s staff.  He raised it once, twice, and, high as she was above him, she could see how sharp the contrast was between the yellow whites of his eyes and the swarthy color of his face.

Now, for the third time, the bright steel of the axe flashed in the sunshine, and immediately after trumpet-calls sounded and were repeated at short intervals, which still, to her, seemed intolerably long.  How Melissa had presence of mind enough to count them she knew not, but she did.  At the seventh all was still, and soon after a short blast on the tuba rang out from above, below, and from all sides of the stadium.  Each went like an arrow to the heart of the anxious, breathless girl.  From the moment when she had seen Zminis she had expected the worst, but the cry of rage and despair from a thousand voices which now split her ear told her how far the incredible reality outdid her most horrible imaginings.

Breathless, and with a throbbing brain, she leaned out as far as she could, and neither felt the burning sun-which was now beginning to fall on the western face of the temple—­nor heeded the risk of being seen and involving herself and her protectress in ruin.  Trembling like a gazelle in a frosty winter’s night, she would gladly have withdrawn from the window, but she felt as if some spell held her there.  She longed to shut her ears and eyes, but she could not help looking on.  Her every instinct prompted her to shriek for help, but she could not utter a sound.